1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of Internet marketing.
2. Discussion of the Background
With the increasing popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web, it has become common for merchants to set up Web sites (server computer systems serving web pages to client computers) for marketing and selling goods. Via these web sites, users (i.e., people using client computers) can access and place orders for millions of products.
One problem commonly encountered by online merchants is an inability to effectively market goods via their Web sites. Web sites are designed to handle two party goods and service transactions where a user using a client computer purchases a good or a service from a merchant by sending instructions from the user's client computer to the merchant's server computer. These transactions typically involve additional parties enabling the crediting of the transaction. The additional parties are a credit card company providing the user a line of credit and a merchant account company authorizing or denying and accounting for the merchant's charges to user's credit cards.
Another problem commonly faced by online merchants is an inability to efficiently attract potential consumers to their Web sites. One way of attracting consumers has been to market the site through television, newspaper and Internet advertisements. However, advertising a site using conventional methods can be expensive, and can consume significant human resources. In addition, it is often difficult or impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of a given advertisement.
The present invention addresses these and other problems.